Archive for January, 2009

I know this post is out of order but I wanted to share a link to our beach photo session. Our wedding photographer Michelle (http://www.studiozimage.com/) had given us the gift of a free photo session for our wedding. We decided to use it to get some pictures for our Hanumas cards this year. We went down to the beach in Carlsbad on December 12th and let Sophie crawl around in the sand while Michelle took some pictures. As usual, she did a fantastic job and we got some great photos for our card.

Here’s what our Hanumas card looked like:

And here is a link to our posting on Michelle’s blog where you can see some of the photos that didn’t make it onto the card:

As you have probably already figured out if you’ re reading this post, I’m back from vacation. Sorry for the long break, but I decided to spend my time over the past month enjoying the holidays and being with my family. I’ll try to catch up ASAP so you’re not reading blog posts about things that happened two months ago, but it might take me a little while to catch up. Thanks for your patience.

On November 14th we headed down to the San Diego Zoo for a quick visit. (You remember the Zoo, right? We held a little party there a while back.) We went there in order to see Frank, the Zoo’s newborn baby gorilla. Unfortunately, they brought him out ahead of schedule and then he fell asleep, so by the time we arrived he was back inside.

We did get to see the rest of the gorillas. Sophie was really fun to watch, because it was the first time that she really recognized that there was something on the other side of the glass, and that it was some kind of animal similar to the dogs and cats she was familiar with.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the gorilla exhibit at the zoo, the exhibit is made up of large glass windows, and if the gorillas wish they can come right up to the window face to face with the human visitors. As we were sitting there watching the gorillas play, one of them came up to the glass where I was holding Sophie. The gorilla sat there looking at Sophie for a few minutes. Sophie got very excited and started to bang her hand on the glass window. When the gorilla saw this, she stood up and banged on her side just opposite of where Sophie was doing it (not in a threatening way, more like she was playing along) and then got up and ran away. It was a really cool experience.

Here are Debbie and Sophie watching the gorillas:

Here is Sophie playing on one of the gorilla sculptures:

We also spent some time watching the pandas. (It’s nice going to the zoo on a weekday in November because there is no line to see the pandas!)

As many of you know, Sophie has been going to swim classes since the beginning of September. She really seems to enjoy going to class, and has even improved her swimming technique (I think learning to crawl helped a lot).

Because of the Veterans Day holiday on November 11th, we had the rare opportunity to have Debbie join us at swim class. (There were also about 3 other dads their because they had the day off too.) Since Debbie was there to hold Sophie I was able to get in the pool with my camera and get some pictures.